MONTREAL - When you go to a restaurant that specializes in meatballs, the jokes are just waiting to happen, intentionally or not.

“How many balls does a person need?” my friend wondered aloud as we looked at the menu at Le Ballpark. By “looked at the menu,” I mean that one of us (me) walked over to the blackboard on other side of the room to see what was on offer, and took a snapshot to bring back to the table.

As this becomes an increasingly common dining out exercise, it won’t be long before there’s a menu-capture setting on mobile phones for just such occasions.

Opened in December on the edge of Little Italy, the corner room was cosy if uncrowded on a polar vortex night. To match their approachable concept of laid-back, communal comfort food, owners Guillaume Filion and Dominic St-Laurent have created a space with lots of potential to be welcoming.

The setting is a nice mix of darkness and wood and quirky-cute touches, like upside-down lamps on the ceiling, complete with electric cords snaking to central fixtures.

Having scored the hot seat, literally, I happily settled onto a curved-back park bench above a baseboard heater, warmth emanating over the small of my back through the wooden slats, like a heated car seat.

We got to work carving up an appetizer of American salad, fun off the bat for its presentation. Iceberg lettuce was sliced across to create a slab on which to put cubes of ham, bacon morsels, a halved hard-boiled egg, radish, tomato and scattered chives. Under cubes of blue cheese and a drizzle of creamy homemade ranch dressing, it had a refreshing crunch beneath pungent flavours. I’d definitely get it again.

French onion soup in a crock bowl was fairly standard, but I’d get it again too; importantly, the stock was hot all the way through under the bread cubes and melted cheese.

Partly because I was curious, partly because I wanted to say, “Give us all your balls,” we asked for one of everything from the six different variations.

The meatballs came about three to an order, ideal for sharing between three of us. Most were tasty and enjoyable, even if none really knocked it out of the park in terms of originality.

Italian-style polpette, basking in a simple tomato sauce, came out tops. Savoury with herbs and riched up with ricotta cheese, the ground beef had a bit of bounce yet still some looseness to it. A close second were round fishcakes of flaked tilapia inside a nicely browned crust. And the house tartar sauce, creamy with chopped capers and pickles, proved again why it’s a good friend of the deep fried. A spherical take on chicken divan scored some points for the hints of red pepper in the mix, and the added layer of blue cheese meets ranch dressing for complexity of taste.

Pork balls came on strong — the sweet and smoky barbecue sauce was heavy hitting — but were too dry and cloying to really win me. And by the time I got to the tasty minced lamb with gyro-style seasonings and tzatziki sauce and the falafel presented with minarets of hummus on top, there was a sense of feeding on the international hits without much of a twist. A little evolution would bring it all home, and make the dishes more specific to Le Ballpark.

For something on the side, braised fennel was a bonus. Tender to the fork, scattered with chopped walnuts, the slow-cooked anise sweetness playing off a hint of salty fishiness from anchovies. I liked it a lot, so much that I would have liked to see more fun veggies from the kitchen to balance the balls and the heavy items like mushroom risotto or fries.

The one dessert, an ice cream sandwich, could take different hues depending on the choice of filling. The construction of chocolate chip cookies, warmed to soft and gooey and filled with a layer of pistachio, was somehow a suitable sendoff for the weather.

My feeling was that Le Ballpark is still in spring training, making adjustments here and there.

It’s clear that the team cares — for example, the cocktails (which run from a Caesar with an oyster and pickled celery to a bubbly Seelbach with Prosecco and Aperol) are actively being tweaked — and the owners are attentive to feedback from the communities it serves to make this work where previous occupant Zito e Mangia couldn’t.

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